


Take or Leave it as I Please

by Esmethewitch



Category: MASH (TV), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Medical, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Graphic Description of Corpses, Imperial politics, No Lesbians Die, Worldbuilding, canon characters just have cameos, military medicine in space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: The adventures, mishaps, and drama of the 4076th Mobile Imperial Surgical Station at Galactic War. Major Arielle Hux struggles to adapt to the laxer medical culture after transferring from the Imperial Army. Her colleagues fight loneliness, apathy, the bureaucratic war machine, and Death. Tensions arise when the drafted medics' moral compasses clash with the actions of the Empire.
Relationships: Brendol Hux & Original Female Character, Original Female Character & Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Male Characters & Original Female Characters
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Take or Leave it as I Please

Major Arielle Hux was lost. She’d followed the signs towards “Physician’s Quarters”, but the last signpost had been what felt like a mile of linoleum away. The whole ship reeked of disinfectant, its pine-sharp smell barely masking the sickly-sweet miasma of old blood. The strap of her duffel bag cut into her shoulder. She ignored it. She was not about to admit defeat after a day of travel and confusing datawork forms and camp out on this floor of the 4076th Mobile Imperial Surgical Station. Now that she was a doctor, she wasn’t going to give her new colleagues, her new  _ command  _ any reason to doubt her competence. She’d asked around for Dr. Khoyyim everywhere. To no avail.

The first man to answer her shook his head and said: “Sorry, kid. She’s just come off fourteen hours. I’d ask Dr. Rashil or the charge nurse if you have any questions. Nursing staff bunk up that way, I’d talk to Captain Panassa if you need anything.” He gestured to his right. “Straight on that way, left at the second corridor. Tell them Sergeant Panit sent you.”

“Oh. Thank you, Sergeant, but I’m not a nurse.”

“Ah. If you’re a newly transferred Corpsman, I’d see Corporal---”

She cut him off. “I’m a  _ doctor.  _ Starting my residency under” she checked her datapad in a show of weakness: “Dr. Nadia Khoyyim, Lieutenant.” Wait, this woman, this  _ legend  _ was just a lieutenant? She was going to start the next phase of her medical training outranking her supervisor. Not exactly a situation that inspired confidence in her mentor-to-be’s leadership competence, to be sure.

The stocky man in Army greens goggled at her. “My apologies,  _ doctor.  _ Usually they’re older. At this time of the morning, she’d be in the Officer’s Mess or her quarters. Hacker’s been through a hell of a week and was on her feet with her fingers down chest cavities for fourteen hours, she’s got leave to sleep for the day.”

And this doctor’s inferior officers called her a “hack!” Was it possible that there were two Dr. Khoyyims in the Imperial Army? If there were, it would be just her luck to get the worse one. Why the kriffing Sith hell did Khoyyim have her “fingers down chest cavities” ? Wasn’t there machinery for that? Worst of all, she wasn’t that young; she’d just turned twenty-three. Maybe  _ most people  _ went to Post-Secondary Academy for four years after they turned eighteen and then to medical school, but she’d planned things well and started the requisite pre-med classes when she was sixteen.

Major Hux’s dismay must have been visible to Panit. The man sighed. “Kid, your Attending has had a long week and a long night. You need time to settle in too. Just get yourself to your quarters and have a good sleep, you’ll need it when you go on the night shift. Turn left here, go three doors down, turn right, then left, then right again and that will get you there.”

“Thank you,  _ sergeant. _ ” Hux turned and walked the way she thought the Sergeant told her to. She looped circles around the empty halls. Wouldn’t a hospital ship have less empty space than this?

She heard the faint hum of machinery (washing machine, perhaps) and voices up ahead. Someone was laughing. Arielle took a steadying breath and tucked a couple of errant strands of red hair back into its regulation bun, straightened her cap, and marched forward. 

There, against a set of washing machines slouched two women, one dressed in full civvies, the other wearing an open Army jacket over a nightgown. One was tall with tan skin, hair pulled back into a greasy black ponytail. Her deep brown eyes were sunken into dark circles, giving the impression of a living skull. She was reading aloud from an old-fashioned book with actual pages in a poor imitation of a Core Imperial accent. “...then, the Raven-haired Jedi Knight dropped to his knees before the Queen of Naboo, his loose robes doing little to conceal the tented, engorged Man-flesh that throbbed with passion for his royal love. ‘Hwat would you have me do for you, milady? I may haahve pledged moiself to the Jedi Ordah hwhen I was but a youth, but now I serve you, my sweet little skittermouse!’ The Queen lifted the hem of her sumptuous brocade skirt and…”

The other woman, short and delicate-featured, was erupting into a series of unladylike snorts, one brown hand clamped over her mouth. After taking a few deep breaths and producing a tissue from the pocket of her Army jacket to wipe her nose, she swatted her companion’s arm. “Stop. No more. Especially when you try to change your accent. It doesn’t suit you. And those descriptions are putting me more off men than anything my ex did.”

The reader snapped the book shut and placed it back on a shelf with a collection of other tattered volumes. “Fine. And here I was, tryin’ to bring a little culture to this here outpost of civilization.”

“And we were all the worse for it, I’m sure.” This woman’s accent was true Imperial, somewhere around the Hosnian system, if Hux was any judge. Though the accent may have been the result of years of Received Pronunciation at school. “I think this author was a virgin. Loose robes are going to  _ hide  _ a stiffy. I was almost married once, I know these things.”

The grating tones of a buzzer sounded. The shorter woman bent down and opened the door of a dryer, packing colorful blobs of non-regulation clothing into a string bag. Then, she froze with a groan, moving one hand to the small of her back. “Kriff!”

“Want me to crack it?”

“Yes, please.”

“You should get against a wall, Lasereye. Ya should have told me your back was troubling you earlier, I would have done something...”

“You were busy. In sterile gloves. So was I. And don’t get on me for this, my back was perfectly fine until I started doing things like bending over…”

They turned, and both noticed her at once. 

“Just let us get this laundry loaded up, and we’ll have someone show you to the nurse’s dorms,” the tall woman said. “Captain Panassa should get you sorted out with the duty roster and moving in.”

“I’m not a nurse!” The indignity set in. “I am a surgical resident under Dr. Khoyyim, if anybody could be bothered to introduce me to her!” Her voice wobbled a bit at the end, and she blushed. It had been a long day. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate.

The woman with the disgusting ponytail packed the last pair of (non-regulation) panties into her string bag and shut the drier door. She stood up. “That would be me,” she said. “Dr. Nadia Khoyyim, at your service. I believe you are also our new roommate, since Sanina left us last month and we’ve got a free bunk.”

She reached out a hand. Arielle shook it. “Welcome to hell, kid,” Khoyyim said. She moved over to the Imperial woman, who was bracing herself against a wall, and gave her a few hard whacks on the back. There was a crunch, and the woman (Lasereye?) gasped. Then, Khoyyim rubbed her over with a series of businesslike circles of her hands.

“Better?”

“Oh, Hacker, that’s good. Mmmph.” she sighed. “You shouldn’t have gone to medical school. You should have kept on doing physical therapy.”

Khoyyim sighed. “You’re right. I used to teach people to walk again. Now I’m a butcher.” Lasereye straightened up, and Khoyyim grabbed the laundry bag. “Now, Hicks, was it?” They started down a corridor.

“ _ Hux,”  _ said Arielle, seething.

“Sorry, Hux. I’ll try to remember that. When I first got here, everyone kept mispronouncing my name so it sounded like ‘slut’ back on the Old Planet. Well, Dad’s Old Planet, I’ve never been but I can get by in the language. They didn’t know. The ‘oh’ is long and there’s a pause in the middle, you see. If you shorten it, that changes things. I got around that when I became Hacker. I hope I didn’t insult the past four generations of your family or call you a bantha.”

“No,” said Hux. “It’s fine.”

“Anyway. Hux. This here is Dr. Eloise Ansfar, but you can call her Lasereye. Nevermind why.”

Hux shook Ansfar’s hand. “Pleased to meet you...Captain?”

Ansfar pursed her lips. “Technically, it’s Lieutenant. If there aren’t any real Army brass present, call me Ansfar or Lasereye. Don’t ever yell out ‘Doctor’, because half the senior staff will answer.”

They reached a doorway bearing a hand-labeled sign that read “Mustafar”. 

“Here we are,” said Lasereye. “Our happy home.”

“Why is it called ‘Mustafar’?”

“Because that’s how hot it gets when the boilers malfunction.”

The two older women plopped down onto adjacent Army cots to the creaking of bedsprings.

“Kriff it, I’m too tired to even have a drink,” Khoyyim muttered. 

“Mhmm,” Ansfar agreed. She sighed, then took off her Army jacket (tossing it on the floor), and tugged a black silk haircap over her fluffy hair. She took a swig from a waterbottle that was sitting on a crowded table that may have once been a desk, gargled, and pulled the blankets over her head.

Hux glanced at the crumpled ball of the jacket. “Are you…?”

“Am I  _ what? _ ”, came the muffled reply from the bed.

“Are you seriously just going to leave that jacket there? It will get wrinkled.”

Khoyyim sighed and put a hand on her shoulder. Hux forced herself not to flinch. “Kid, forget everything they told you in boot camp. This is the Army, but it isn’t the  _ Army.  _ They only inspect our quarters when someone from Command has his panties in a twist. And most of the time, they forget we’re here. Which is just fine by me, seein’ as if they inspected me every morning I’d be tempted to perform some unnecessary sedations. Don’t bother shining your boots and doing push-ups. You’re free.”

“That’s not  _ military  _ at all,” Hux retorted. “We should really…”

“If ya wanted to march around and lick boots, you chose the wrong branch of the Service,” Khoyyim said. “You’re in Medical now. We stitch people up. You can’t heal the wounded with shiny boots and a smart uniform. You’ll be in scrubs most of the time anyway.”

“But…” This wasn’t what Hux thought it would be at all. “I mean, I love medicine. I really do. But aren’t we here for Empire too?”

Khoyyim broke down into hysterical laughter. “The Empire owns my ass and dragged me here. You’re not seriously telling me you  _ volunteered,  _ kid?”

“I volunteered!” Hux felt her blood beginning to boil. “I care deeply about the Empire’s mission to bring peace to the Galaxy, and though I can’t be there with the ground troops, I’ll support them from the Surgical unit!” She frowned. “And slavery’s illegal in the Empire. What do you  _ mean,  _ ‘owns my ass’?”

Khoyyim glared. “I get home from my shift in Coruscant General. By now I can work the day shifts, so I’m looking forward to dinner with my folks. My mom and dad. They’re doing fine, and I’ve also made enough to get us all a nice house with a little bit of garden, Dad likes to putter around in it. So, here I am. A bit tired, but I just checked over a five-year-old a day post-op. Everything’s great. The kid is talking, asking when he can get up to play again. His valves are opening and shutting like they should. His parents have finally gotten a night of sleep.”

Khoyyim clenched her fists. “I open the door. I say: ‘Mom, I’m home, do you need a hand in the kitchen?’ Nobody says anything. I walk in. Maybe she’s napping and Dad’s out at some Texts Study Group meeting with the church that I forgot about. Stranger things have happened. But usually, Mom would message me and say something like: ‘I’m taking a nap, don’t stomp around when you get home.’ Not this time.”

“Wait, you live with your parents?” Hux was aghast. If a well-respected surgeon in her thirties couldn’t make enough money to live alone, there was no hope for her.

“Lived. They’re not here  _ now,  _ obviously. But yes, I’m a respectable Alderaanian girl and I stay with my mom and dad till I get married. And there’s no chance of that happening.”

“Alderaanian?” Khoyyim’s skin tone seemed a shade or two too dark for that, as well as the fact that her surname did not end with “ana”. 

“Technically, yes. My mother’s from Alderaan, came over to Coruscant when she was fifteen. But the thing about Alderaan is that it’s about the culture you were raised in. And I did get that.” Khoyyim reached under her bed for a bottle of brandy, and took a gulp. “Ah. I need it for this part of the story. Anyhow. The house is too quiet. We’re in a good part of town, but I’m getting scared. I walk to the kitchen. And there, I kid you not, is a full squadron of Stormtroopers. With blasters trained on my parents. One of them serves me my papers and tells me to get my things in order, no, they won’t wait in the front garden. I asked what they’d do if I told them to go to hell. They said they’d take my father instead. He’s an electrician, right? Well, he was before he retired. He could be fixing things on a Light Destroyer...up at the Outer Rim front. So I said yes.”

“They were nice to you,” Ansfar said. “They didn’t show up at my  _ house  _ and give me a ride.”

“What happened to you?”, Hux asked. 

“I was in a spaceport, waiting for a shuttle connection. I was going to be married. It’s bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other right before and we were holding the wedding on Naboo, so we were traveling separately. Announcement comes in over the comms: ‘Attention! Any Imperial citizen with medical certification, report to Security Checkpoint Five.’ Like a fool, I go to Security Checkpoint Five. I assumed somebody was having a heart attack or something. Instead, I get told that I’m conscripted into the glorious Imperial Army as a surgeon. I said I was getting married. They said they’d give me leave after I did six months. They didn’t. He sent me a ‘Dear Jyn’ holo after the first year. That’s what I get for showing a bit of kindness in this Galaxy.”

“You should have volunteered,” said Hux, though not as reproachfully as she might have. “The Empire needs surgeons.”

“Because they make people mad enough to try to drop bombs on them and shoot at them,” Khoyyim muttered. “Call me a Sympathizer, but without an Army, there aren’t any epidemics of chest wounds and blown-off limbs. Ugh. Goodnight, kid. Get some sleep.”

“It’s the morning.”

“Good  _ morning,  _ kid, get some sleep,” said Ansfar. “And if you can’t do that, keep your opinions about the draft to yourself as you weren’t taken away.”

Hux changed out of her uniform into shorts and a tank, then lay down on her rickety Army cot with her dog tags in her fist. She couldn’t sleep. She should have been going for a run by now. She tried to compose a mental letter to her older brother Brendol, who was commanding ground troops in the battle against the insurgents on Yavin IV:

_ Dear Bren, _

_ Being a commissioned officer isn’t all I thought it would be. I’m fairly certain my attending physician is a Sympathizer and that nobody here likes me. My roommates are slobs. And of course, one of them is my attending. I got lost on the way to my quarters. Thank you for sending me those biscuits, they were the only thing I ate today because I didn’t have time to find the Mess, much less eat. _

_ But I mustn’t complain. We have proper sonics and laundry here, which is more than you have out in the jungle, I know. We’re not in trenches, so there’s no trench-foot for us. And we’re not being shot at by Rebels, so there is that. I look forward to caring for the brave soldiers who did their duty on the Front. I will write you again when I have more news. I miss you and hope you are safe and well. _

_ Your loving sister, _

_ Arielle Hux. _

She wouldn’t actually write or send this letter, she knew. It was far too short to waste a transmission on. By the time Bren actually got back to civilization, months would have gone by and this sad excuse for news would be old news. But she liked to imagine writing it, and Bren’s expression at the heaped laundry and crumpled uniforms on the floor. He’d have an aneurysm. Good thing that she was learning how to treat aneurysms. 

Sleep finally came. Moments after falling into a nice dream about High Tea, she was roughly shaken awake.


End file.
